Donald Harris served as an administrator and faculty member at the New England Conservatory from 1967-1977. Harris left NEC to go to the Hartt School of Music where he served as Chair of the Theory and Composition Department as well as Composer in Residence for three years. Then in 1980, Harris was named Dean of the School, succeeding Donald Mattran. He remained in this position until 1988, when he left to become Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Music at Ohio State University. In 1997, Harris stepped down as dean and rejoined the OSU faculty in composition. Donald Harris earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in composition from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Ross Lee Finney. From there Harris went to Paris where he studied with Nadia Boulanger. Also while in Paris, Harris was a music consultant to the United States Information Service, and he produced the city's first postwar Festival of Contemporary American Music. Harris's other teachers included Lukas Foss, Boris Blacher, and Max Deutsch, a student of Arnold Schoenberg. Included among Harris's numerous commissions are: the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in the Library of Congress, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Radio France, and the Cleveland Orchestra. Harris was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship (1956) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1966), and an ASCAP Deems Taylor award (1989). In 1991, Harris was honored with an award in composition from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, which led to a retrospective recording of his work on the CRI label in 1994. His music has been published in France by Editions Jobert and in the United States by Theodore Presser and GUNMAR music. Harris was also co-editor of the W.W. Norton publication of the correspondence between Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg.
From the description of Donald Harris collection, 1967-1977. (New England Conservatory of Music). WorldCat record id: 663100221
